The Rhos guests of Louis the Pious: whence and wherefore?

Venezia e la laguna tra IX e X secolo: strutture materiali, insediamenti, economie

“…Baboutzikos era stato inviato da Bisanzio alla corte di Lotario per negoziare un'alleanza contro gli Arabi, ma si fermò a Venezia per circa un anno dove armò una fl otta di sessanta imbarcazioni in brevissimo tempo. È possibile supporre che sia stato proprio Baboutzikos ad introdurre in laguna una tipologia di nave da guerra, detta chelandria, in precedenza sconosciuta 52 . Se l'accostamento tra il tesoretto monetale e Th eodosios ha una sua qualche ragion d'essere, almeno d'ordine cronologico, che relazione poteva esserci tra il funzionario imperiale e l'area di San Tomà?…”

Klavs Randsborg and the Ninth Century AD

“…Byzantine seals from excavations at Hedeby, Ribe and Tissø suggest that from c. AD 840 Byzantine ambassadors were aware of this emerging market (cf. Shepherd 1995). Likewise, to see the Danish army in mid to later 9 th -century England as pagan raiders rather than conquerors is a mistake.…”

Chapter 3: The Waterfront of Istria: Sea and Identity in the post-Roman Adriatic

“…66 The chelandiae were rather well-known warships.67 From the eleventh-century witness of Thietmar of Merseburg we know that they were large vessels able to carry one hundred and fifty men.68 In this context, John let his audience understand that those kinds of big ships did not exist before, and Jonathan Shepard linked the new technology to the presence of the imperial patrician Theodosius. 69 This may have been the case, but warships are attested almost continuously in the early medieval Adriatic. Nevertheless, they seem to have been used in particular moments only.…”

“…This is rarely mentioned. An exception could be the prior Andreas of Zadar, who, in 918, explicitly recorded the possession of (at least) one vessel.53 Although 46 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum iv, 69 Andreas was perhaps the highest-ranking officer in his town, men of lower standing must have had boats too. The capitanei complained how the bishops' men cut their fishing nets, causing them great financial damage.54 The mention of retia is a very rare glimpse of the structure of everyday life.…”